Chuck Stewart: Framing the Sound

Creative Loafing Critic’s Pick

Chuck Stewart was the celebrated photographer of at least 2,000 album covers showing seminal jazz artists such as Sarah Vaughn, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Louis Armstrong, Sonny Rollins and Lionel Hampton. The Sun ATL exhibition, officially supported by his estate, focuses on Stewart’s work in the field of jazz, but his oeuvre includes images of rock musicians, sports figures, fashion models, actors and heads of state. He also published a book of nudes in 1961. Born in 1927 in Henrietta, Texas, Stewart’s first photographic subject, using his recently gifted Kodak Brownie, was opera contralto Marian Anderson, who visited his middle school in 1940 when he was 13 years old. He was able to sell his shots of her for $2, thus becoming a professional shutterbug during the Depression. He later joined the Army and took photos of atomic bomb tests. His career took off when a like-minded friend hooked him up with record labels in New York; Stewart’s chronicle of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme recording sessions in 1964 is now enshrined in the Smithsonian Institution. In 2008, Jazz at Lincoln Center presented an exhibition titled Looking at the Music: The Jazz Photography of Chuck Stewart, during which he received the Milt Hinton Award for Excellence.

— Kevin C. Madigan

Officially supported by the Chuck Stewart Estate, Framing the Sound focuses on Stewart’s extraordinary jazz photography and his role in shaping the visual history of American music.

Artists: Chuck Stewart

Venue: The Sun ATL

More Info: View exhibit details